An ongoing review of politics and culture

Breakthrough links to a new GAO report on emissions trading in Europe. The results are not encouraging. The solution set we’re dealing with seems hilariously inadequate to me. The most popular policies — ETS, CDM — have been advanced because they will cause the least economic disruption for Europe, thanks to population decline and mature economies. This short essay from Bruce Berkowitz provides useful context on the power politics behind the discourse on climate change.

This scenario most likely to make this apparent is one in which we embark upon a set of geoengineering-based responses to the climate problem (not as the sole solution, but as a disaster-avoidance measure), probably starting in the early-mid 2010s. These would likely be various forms of thermal management, such as stratospheric sulfate injections or high-altitude seawater sprays, but might also include some form of carbon capture via ocean fertilization, or even something not yet fully described*. Mid-2010s strikes me as a probable starting period, mostly out of a combination of desperation and compromise; geo advocates might see it as already too late, while geo opponents would likely want to have more time to study models.

As a result, by 2030, while various carbon mitigation and emission reduction schemes continue to expand, a good portion of international diplomacy concerns just how to control (and deal with the unintended consequences of) climate engineering technologies. It’s not impossible that there will be an outbreak or two of violence over geo management.

The timing could be off. But I can’t see how AGWisn’t going to sharpen global conflict.

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I find the whole concept of geo-engineering frightening. It seems awfully hubristic to think we can foresee or manage all the consequences of some of the ideas being advanced.

I think that’s right — the same could be said of the atom bomb. This incredibly destructive weapon was created to, so the argument goes, forestall even worse consequences. Similar arguments will be deployed for geo-engineering, particularly if the nightmare scenarios come true and catastrophic climate change accelerates. I don’t think this will necessarily happen. But the scenarios sketched out by James Hansen suggests that it will.

I find the whole concept of geo-engineering frightening. It seems awfully hubristic to think we can foresee or manage all the consequences of some of the ideas being advanced.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. If we start deploying geo-engineering techniques, we’re going to fuck things up more deeply than we can possibly imagine. It terrifies me to know that people exist who believe that deploying techniques which sound good on the back of a napkin and which by design impact the entire global climate and whose presumed efficacy and side effects are only conjecture—having only one climate therefore no possible way to test the truth of our assumptions—is a good idea.

You may be surpirsed to learn that I pretty much agree with you. I’ve advocated research to develop these technlogies so that we have them as an emergency solution in the highly unlikely (in my view) case that we need them.

Reihan:

The timing could be off

I figure that’s your droll humor in action. “early-mid 2010s” is presumably no later that 2014, or 6 years from now. I’ll offer an open bet to anyone who wants it, that subject to agreed definitions, there will not be large-scale themral management of the Earth’s atmosphere by Decemebr 31, 2014.

Is it even real? Would there even be a set of things to implement by 2014? I’m sure I’m not looking in the right places, but the only google searches for “high-altitude seawater sprays” go to that link or pages linking to it.

I’m all for the sciences, but this strikes me as a giveaway and as a rhetorical move to make us think science can protect us from the tail risk – that’s we’ll “engineer” our way out of this. In which case the comparison is not to the atomic bomb, but to our missile defense shield, which still can’t hit a single thing.

But how do nukes forestall worse outcomes? Deterrence. What will we do, tell global warming that if it doesn’t stop, we’ll block out the sun entirely with our doomsday reflective cloud-seeding? Glib of course, but it seems like a vast global depression brought about through cap and trade or a carbon tax is far better than filling the ocean with iron filings to help cool it, setting in motion a climate cooling system we can’t control.